Borage / Hjulkrone

Borago officinalis

Borago originates from Europe where it was cultivated by the Arabs in the south. It grows wild along roads and in fields.

Borago is in Denmark also known as agurkeurt = cucumberherb. The plant is 30-60 cm tall with elliptical leaves covered in rough hair, the flowers are wheelshaped with a fine skye blue colour all summer untill october. The plant smells of cucumber when it is chopped. Borago is actually not a spice herb. Today there is a warning against eating the rough leaves since the plant is related to comfrey, Symphtym officinale, which is forbidden to use for food. 

The borago keeps its germination for up till three years, and it is best to saw it in May. Make small grooves in the garden bed with 25 cm's distance between the rows and 7 cm between each seed and cover the seeds  The seeds have to be covered with soil since they need darkness . The plant throws many seeds, so it will germinate in many places the next year, especially since it is spread by ants.


The plant thrives well in all kinds of soil, but mostly in a nutrient rich and moist soil. If it grows in a sunny place it will flower long -  if the surroundings are too dry, the leaves will collapse and have to be watered. A poor soil must be given compost before seedling.

Borago can be plant in pots in window boxes or plant together with dill, fennel ananas-sage etc in jars on the terasse. It is loved by the bees and it has a rich flowering all summer. Borago is an annual self-seeding summer flower Only the flowers and seeds of borago is recommended in cooking.

Food: Vegetable use of borage is common in Germany, in the Spanish regions of Aragon and Navarre, in the Greek island of Crete and in the northern Italian region of Liguria. Although often used in soups, one of the better known German borage recipes is the Green sauce (Grüne Soße) made in Frankfurt. In Italian Liguria, borage is commonly used as a filling of the traditional pasta ravioli and pansoti. It is used to flavour pickled gherkins in Poland.

Drinks: 

 

Borage is traditionally used as a garnish in the Pimms Cup cocktail, but is nowadays often replaced by a long sliver of cucumber peel or by mint. It is also one of the key "Botanical" flavourings in Gilpin's Westmorland Extra Dry Gin.  

History: Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides say  that borage was the "Nepenthe" mentioned in Homer, which caused forgetfulness when mixed with wine. Francis Bacon thought that borage had "an excellent spirit to repress the fuliginous vapour of dusky melancholie." John Gerard's Herball mentions an old verse concerning the plant: "Ego Borago, Gaudia semper ago (I, Borage, bring always courage)". He states that "Those of our time do use the flowers in sallads to exhilerate and make the mind glad. There be also many things made of these used everywhere for the comfort of the heart, for the driving away of sorrow and increasing the joy of the minde. The leaves and floures of Borage put into wine make men and women glad and merry and drive away all sadnesse, dulnesse and melancholy, as Dioscorides and Pliny affirme. Syrup made of the floures of Borage comforteth the heart, purgeth melancholy and quieteth the phrenticke and lunaticke person. The leaves eaten raw ingender good bloud, especially in those that have been lately sicke."

Companion planting: Borage is used in companion planting. It is said to protect or nurse legumes, spinach , brassicas and even strawberries. It is also said to be a good companion plant to tomatoes because it confuses the mother moths of tomato hornworms or manduca looking for a place to lay their eggs. Claims that it improves tomato growth and makes them taste better remain unsubstantiated.

 Folk Medicine: Harpestræng 1300s: to drink together with wine makes the heart happy; a decoct with honey for diseases in lungs, heart and throat.  Christiern Pedersen 1533: against heartache and pain, eat leaves in salad; the flowes with wine; plant juice to mix with decoct of leaves and flowers in honey against jaundice  Henrik Smid 1546: a kale dish of the plant  and spinach is healthy for sick and fragile people; destilled water from flowers help against malaria; the ashes of the burnt herb mixed with honey for  mouth rinsing; the flowers pickled with sugar strengthens the heart. 

The herb was written into the pharmacopoeia in 1772

 

source: Brøndegaard Folk og Flora , Anemette Olesen Krydderurter i haven; Wikipedia: Borago officinalis

photos from wikipedia  

 

The Danish Kitchen in the Middle Ages

.A Brief Summary 

 



The medieval food in Denmark is first of all known from cookbooks handed over from the 1200s and forward. They tell us about what was used in the upper class kitchen,  and since the information is supplied with archaeological examinations and accounts, it can bring us a broader picture, which reveals that the medieval Danish kitchen had a surprisingly international mark. The commodities used were mostly locally produced, but the cooking was similar to the French, English and German sources and the spicing was strong and Middle east.

 

Lent

P.Bruegel: Fight between Carnival and Lent

An important element in the medieval food culture were the numerous Lent days. The Catholic church of the Middle Ages dictated common Lent each Wednesday and Friday, a stronger diet in the 40 days before Easter and in shorter periods up till other ceremonials. All in all it gave 180 Lent days a year. There were special rules about the food in over half the year. The Lent before Easter demanded to renounce all animal food -  but butter, egg and cheese were allowed on the weekly Lent days. Lent food was first of all renouncing meat. Instead people had fish.








Commodities.

The basic food was for the main part of the population mostly bread and butter, made by rye and barley, and to this in lesser amount came oat, wheat, buckwheat and millet. The daily bread was baked on rye, while the broad population had wheat bread only on festival occasions. The barley was used for beer brewing and for porridge. Corn could be stored and used all year, but the food was in general much dependent on the season.

Cattle and swine were usually slaughtered in November and December, and most of the meat were conserved by salting. Poultry like hens, chicken and geese gave fresh meat all year. Cows and sheep gave milch in summer, but not in winter where the fodder was too bad. The milch was not drunk, but conserved as butter and cheese. Meat came also from wild-living animals, but game-hunting was mostly reserved for king and aristocracy.

Plucking cabbage in the garden.

Food like fish played an important role during the numerous Lent days -  and fish were eaten both  fresh salted and dried  Vegetables are almost never mentioned in the written sources, but they must also have been a big part of the food. Even in the cities many people had their own cabbage garden,  where they cultivated green cabbage, peas, beans, onions, red beets and spice herbs.










Spices

The meat - which had been salted down - had to be  watered out in several changes of water hefore it could be used as food. Therefore it was often spiced heavily while cooking. One of the myths of medieval food is that the strong spicing had to drown the taste of rotten commodities, but this was not the truth . The price on spices was very high and it must have been cheaper to get hold of some good meat instead.

Medieval dinner at a prince's house

Royal accounts show that Middle east and Indian spices like saffron, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, nutmeg and cumin were bought in large quantities. It was probably mostly the upper class who could afford the exotic spices on a daily basis, while the less fortunate impersonated the fine food as much as possible at their festivals. An example of the medieval taste for spices is delivered in todays Christmas food where the composition of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and clove dates from the fine food of the Middle Ages.
Spice herbs like parsley, marjoram and thyme plus garlic, horse radish and mustard recur in the recipes and must have been available to everyone, since they can be cultivated in Denmark. Sugar must also be included with the spices. Sugar was bought in the shape of cane-sugar, imported from the Middle East and therefore very costy. The dishes were instead sweetened with honey and raisins.

Beverage

Brewery 16th century

Another myth about the Middle Ages is that everyone drank beer all the time - which is not quite wrong. In return most beer was very thin and with a low alcohol procent. The quality of water was extremely bad, especially in the cities - and this is one of the explanations why people preferred beer. The water was boiled during the brewing process, and even though people knew nothing about bacterias they might have experienced that beer gave lesser problems about sickness than the drinking water. Beer was brewed in most large households for their own use for both adults and children. A stronger beer was brewed for festivals, and if people could afford it they bought the strong German beer which was of a good quality. Wine was imported too, and sweet wine was preferred, eventually sweetened with honey and spices.





source: Danmarkhistorie, Mad og drikke i Middelalderen, Aarhus Universitet, Kultur og Samfund.
photo: wikipedia

Christmas Food and Drink and Dangers outside...

Now it  is soon Christmas again!

We are so used to our Christmas traditions that we don't wonder much about from where they come. Before Christianity was held a midwinterfeast, and it is not exactly known how it was celebrated, but the Icelandic chronicle writer Snorre Sturlasson (1178-1241) tells a Saga about Hakon the Good of Norway, where king Hakon had decided that the midwinterfeast - called Jól - had to be celebrated at the same time as the Christian feast on 24-25 December. The Jól was originally placed at the midwinternight, which at Snorre's time was in the middle of January. The name  Jól is of pre-Christian origin and means feasts.

Hakon the Good, P.N. Arbo  1800s

The ancient midwinterfeast was a celebration, where the wish about peace and fertility for the next year was dominant. King Hakon was very interested in Christianity, which was not a popular hobby in Norway at that time, and on his visit to one of his landlords,where the king had to bless the beer, he cheated by making the sign of the cross.This was rather unwelcome.

There is only one pre-Christian source about the ancient Jul. The singer says in a ballad that he wants "to drink Jul" while sailing on the sea. "To drink Jul" was one of the important elements of Christmas, and  this tradition goes back to pre-Christian times, but it is not certain if the beerdrinking and the intoxication might have had a cultic significance.

Julafton, Carl Larsson, Sweden

Together with Christianity the Jul gradually became a feast of the birth of Jesus, but since he is called the "Light of the World" it is actually correlating well with the basic idea of Christmas and the old celebration of the New Year and the coming light. The birth of Jesus was in the 300s defined as 25 December. Winter solstice was placed on this day in the Roman Empire- this created a situation where Jesus could compete with other deities who also had their main holy days around winter solstice - like in the Mithras religion. In the North the Jul was put together with the Christian feast for the birth of Christ, but the church did not succeed in naming the feast Kristmesse (Christmas). In Denmark it is still called JUL.

Food and Drink for Christmas

Ham and bacon were important. The pig had to die!

When the Christmas food had to be prepared for the table the pig had to be slaughtered. During the Christmas period people had -  if they could afford it - enough fat food and strong beer. In the 1700-1800s it was especially the meat from pork which was served on the Christmas table, and it was prepared into fresh boiled ham, sausage, blood sausage and salt food. The pigs had ideally been out in the forest all autumn, eating themselves fat in beech seeds and acorns. After autumn came November, named slagtermåned (slaughter month). And the fat pigs were being slaughtered.

Slaughtering the pig was an event above the usual. The farm people had to prevent someone from looking at the pig with evil eyes - and after the pig had been scalded and opened, the guts had to be brought into the house as soon as possible, and doors and windows of the scullery were closed, for if they were open, they might risc that the pig's intestines broke or all other kinds of misfortune happened. In order to prevent "unauthorized" persons to get into the scullery during the work, a cross was cut in the pig's heart, lungs and liver, before it was put into a water-filled vessel.  In a village at Zealand an ancient custom was still kept alive in the 1800s: the upper cervical vertebra was given to the dog. If a human eat the meat of this piece, it meant that he or she would be decapitated the next year. 

Wheat Bread was a special form of giant Christmas cakes and they were often decorated with  refined patterns. But the small Christmas cakes similar to what we know today were also a part of the Christmas delights. 

Giant Christmas bread cake 1637

In a farm the Christmas baking was another important task, especially the baking of sigtebrød (rye bread), a delicacy which people rarely had on daily terms. The large ovens were filled with  big delicious bread. Some breads were round or oval and were called cakes, some of these cakes were immensely giant and might have a weight of 12 kilos. Regardless of shape or weight they were equipped with some decorations. Around 1850s the patterns were drawn with a quill pen, a comb or other pointed things, circles were made by pressing a drinking glass into the dough, creative people stamped potato prints with figures cut in raw potatoes - or they made wooden stamps, where the figures were hearts, pentagrammes, stars and alike.

christmas cake molds 1600s.

There were special aromatic scents of all spices in the house during Christmas, both around the slaughter time and the baking time. When the breadbaking was finished, the next baking was the real cakes. The traditional peppernuts were made without leavening - and those small spicy cakes were as hard as stone. Spices were purchased as whole spices and grounded in a mortar, and the scent and aroma of allspice, cinnamon, pepper, clove, cardamom were the spirit of Christmas. Klejner, applecakes and various waffles also belonged to the Christmas assortment.

christmas beer 1896

Christmas beer had to be sweet. Good and strong and sweet beer was made in the home brewery.

eating and drinking 1600s

In the oldest source about the Nordic Christmas feast was a song from the end of the 800s. Here was no talk about celebrating Jul, but about "drinking jul". In the medieval folk songs the expression "to drink jul" was still used - and in the peasant society juletønden, the Christmas barrel, was the name of the sweet, strong and good beer made on the occassion of  the upcoming Christmas feast. The beer had to be strong and sweet, both honey and extra malt were added. The brewing work was hard, it gave thirst and the wife who did the brewing, might have taken the opportunity "to gaze a little too deep" in the newly brewed beer. A farmer's wife from Zealand had been gazing so deeply in the strong beer that her husband invited the lord of the manor to see the drunken housewife!  She was jumping around singing a song with an uncertain voice. "Is your wife always that happy ?" asked the landlord. The farmer said with a smile. "Well, we did brew some beer yesterday."

Brewery 1600s

The official breweries took gradually over and sent various types of beer on the market around Christmas time. Today, when Tuborg's Christmas beer is sent out the day is called J-day, and the beer is expected with excitement at the pubs.

The society's eating and drinking in Christmas time in the previous centuries might have had several reasons. People undoubtedly both eat and drank plenty when they had the possibility to do so, and Christmas time meant good and delicious food and strong and sweet beer, which contributed to the cosiness in the dark season. Some people meant that the Christmas-eating and drinking might be a means to secure a fertile year. Christmas was an event before the coming year, and by eating and drinking well during this special time people might influence the new year to contain some of the same abundance and ample supply like the previous year.

The Dangers outside

Today we connect Christmas with cosiness and security,  but for people in the old days - especially out in the country - Christmas had another and more gloomy dimension. It was the darkest time of the year and in the dark many dangers and nasty creatures might lurk. Many legends tell about people meeting ghosts and supernatural creatures at Christmas time.

The church service of the deceased:  A wellknown legend is about the church service of the deceased on Christmas night and takes place at a farm near Vokslev church in Himmerland. The farmhand were out early to fodder the horses on Christmas morning. The farm had no clock, and he went into the house to wake up the farmer and his wife. He told them they had slept over, he had heard some singing in the church - and the farmer's wife jumped out of bed. She must not be late for the church service. She dressed and hurried off to  church and into her church stool, but then she discovered that sitting next to her was someone who had died years ago. All the church goers were deceased people. Her neighbour whispered to her that she had to hurry out of the church and hold on to her cape, if she felt that someone was grasping it. She did as she was told - and when she came to the church door her cape was torn away from her. When the village people came to the church in the morning they saw her cape lie outside the church door, torn into little pieces

White Lady, wikipedia

Christmas ghosts. Other legends describe real Christmas ghosts at Kongensgård in Thy. A young girl was haunting each Christmas and New Years Eve, even in the stable where she had once hung herself.  At Spentrup churchyard near Randers a child murderer was haunting between Christmas and New Year, and in Besser vicarage at the island Samsø a child was heard crying on Christmas Eve.

At Høegholm manor a daughter of the landlord was evoked down in the forest, and when she was lowered to her neck she asked permission to come close to the manor by a hanefjed (tiny step) each Christmas Eve. She was allowed to do so and when she will reach the castle on Christmas Eve once upon a time, the castle will sink into the ground . At a farm at Balleskov field near Skanderborg was always a racket at Christmas and New Year, and at a farm in Keldernæs at Lolland "the ghosting" started already in November, increasing during Christmas and diminishing in January.

The Wild Hunt, P.N.Arbo 1872

Hans Lindenow, who died in 1659, drove through Skibbrogade in Kalundborg with his head under his arm. Many had seen this! They were said to be sober!In the town Nordborg at the island Samsø the Helhesten (a ghost horse) came and drank from the water trough. In some districts people might risc to meet "the Wild Hunt",  a society of hunting men and howling dogs, led by "the Night Hunter",  the "Wojensjæger" (the Odinshunter). He meant death and misfortune, if he did not get a ward off sacrifice. He wanted mostly meat for his dogs. The Night Hunter might be what some names suggest, namely nobody else than Odin himself, the Nordic Asatru's wise, but gloomy leader.

Helhesten/ The ghost horse

Death Omens: Christmas was also  - because of its special magic -  very well suited for taking omens, like about weddings, weather, harvest, death and alike. He, who during Christmas dinner sneaked outside and looked through the window, would discover who was a coward and who had to die in the year to come, for this person was sitting by the table without a head or without a shadow. But it was not without a risc to watch this. He might see something shocking and end up being crazy from agitation. This happened to a young guy at Zealand.

Another method was to walk to the churchyard on Christmas midnight and sit upon the church gate with a green turf or some grave mould upon his head. This would make him able to see the shadows of those who had to die in the coming year. This was a most dangerous thing to do. A guy who tried this had his head twisted around. Another guy saw all the shadows, but also someone with a rope around his neck . This was the guy himself who hung himself before the year had gone.  

The grave sow

But there was no security indoors either. If the farm people had forgotten to give a couple of extra sheaves to the gloso (a special staring sow) at the end of the harvest, they would risc that the sinister sow came into the house making lots of ravage on Christmas Eve. The gloso or the grave sow was a giant pig with a knifesharp back with bristly brushes and with staring eyes, announcing death and disaster.

invisible creatures. 1600s

Many ancient stories indicate that some of those supernatural guests were wellknown and expected. In Helsinge parish and in the Århus district the tradition was that the house wife put an extra setting upon the table. At Bornholm and at Zealand the food had to stay on the table on Christmas night and the candles had to burn all night. In some places the residents slept in a bunch of hay on the floor on Christmas night, while the covered beds were empty, ready for the special guests.

Christmas goat

rumble pot

Human Scary Creatures:  Some of the sinister guests were real. Documents from the 1700s tell about the Christmas goat, a dressed-up guy, who was jumping around and goring all people, trying to scare them. A story from the beginning of the 1500s tells about young people running around in "devil's clothes", scaring people and making trouble. The human Christmas ghosts made noise with rumble pots and threw pieces of pots and ash bags on the house doors.  In the end of the 1600s it was forbidden to walk around with the rumble pots  in Copenhagen. But the human scary creatures took the sting out from the terrible supernatural creatures of the Christmas nights by giving them a concrete and harmless form - and there was no risc inviting the human ghosts into the house for a Christmas snaps.






photo from wikipedia and Nordisk folkeliv i det 16 århundrede

 

Café Alrø - a funny Café upon a small Island...........

Café with Menu, Museum, Galleri and Summerflowers.

Upon the small island Alrø is a quite special café and restaurant. The island lies in Horsens fjord with two other islands Hjarnø and Vorsø nearby, Hjarnø has a ferry to the nearby little harbour Snaptun and Vorsø is a protected island with no public access.

Alrø has a dam to the northern coast of Horsens fjord at Sondrup. There is one trafifc road through the island and the café lies in the western end near the ferry place with a little ferry to Snaptun, only meant for  hikers and bikers.

The Café Alrø has been established by some very creative people. It's an entertaining place to visit with various funny and interesting things The café is also known for its good menu. One special dish is extremely popular, it's and old Danish dish, tartlet with chicken in asparagus sauce. Sold portions are counted each year. Upon the island is another restaurant, a gourmet restaurant by the traffic road, "Møllegården". Café Alrø and Møllegården open in the summer season. See the links.  


Café Alrø 

Restaurant Møllegården

The owners love cows - here is the red -white..... actually  Dannebrog

the café seen from entrance

seven young artists have decorated the island and the café.

 - and here's the old black-white race.........

a Highland cow made by paper bags.

singing rock

people playing krolf!

old couple on the bench are models of a married couple from Alrø

keys in small museum

old weight -  in Denmark's smallest museum

old washing roll

rusty bike with scenting lathyrus

artificial swallowtail kept flying (not tethered) with solar energy.

singing rock etc. at the yard

summerflowers were everywhere.

voliere with canaries.

girl playing with ring game.

photo August 2013: grethe bachmann

Sea Buckthorn/ Havtorn

Hippóphaë rhamnoídes

When you pluck the orange berries of sea-buckthorn here in October they are crushed easily and the bush bites you with little thorns. The sea buckthorn grows in the sandy soil in the tough wind and the sea fog on the western coast of Jutland, the fine and healty orange berries are very popular in the Nordic kitchen. It is   a little pearl among wildgrowing Danish fruitbushes, and it has got many names like the Danish sandtorn, strandpil, sandtidsel, ørkenbusk, klintepil or klintetidsel and the  English sandthorn, sallowthorn, or seaberry.


The common sea-buckthorn Hippóphaë rhamnoídes, is by far the most widespread of the species in the genus, with the ranges of its eight subspecies extending from the Atlantic coasts of Europe right across to northwestern China. In western Europe, it is largely confined to sea coasts where salt spray of the sea prevents other larger plants from out-competing it, but in central Asia it is more widespread in dry semi-desert sites where other plants cannot survive the dry conditions. In central Europe and Asia it also occurs as a subalpine shrub above tree line in mountains, and other sunny areas such as river banks. They are tolerant of salt in the air and soil, but demand full sunlight for good growth and do not tolerate shady conditions near larger trees. They typically grow in dry, sandy areas. In China the sea-buckthorn was used for production of medicine for more than 1200 years and it has been traced in Europe back to the 1500s. Plants were used primarily for medicine in Europe against diseases like fever and stomach pain.

Hippophae salicifolia ( willow-leaved sea-buckthorn) is restricted to the Himalaya, to the south of the common sea-buckthorn, growing at high altitudes in dry valleys; it differs from H. rhamnoides in having broader and greener leaves, and yellow berries. A wild variant occurs in the same area, but at even higher altitudes in the alpine zone.It is a low shrub not growing taller than 1 metre.

The Hippóphaë rhamnoídes /sea buckthorn grows in Denmark primarily upon banks and dunes at the sea since it needs sun and calcareous soil. The fruits are small orange berries, and contrary to many other fruits the berries sit on the plant even when ripe. This makes harvesting difficult, not at least because of the thorns.
The fruits are not easy to get hold of - and when you've finally got a hold they splash out among your fingers. There is a method:  put a cloth under the bush and shake the plant. Another method: cut some branches with many fruits and put them in the freezer for half an hour and the fruits can be beaten off.



The taste of the orange fruits is sourish, but after frost they are milder. During starvation periods the sea buckthorn was a valuable vitamin supplement for a poor family. In the old days people in the country eat a mix of milk, syrup and buchthorn.The berries give also a fine taste to a spice snaps, and they are fine in marmalade and porridge. Cremes and lotions are made from oil pressed from the kernel.

Glatved strand, Djursland, habitat for sea-buckthorn.

The bush is very hardy and thrives well in an infertile soil. This is possible because it has a coexistence with actinomyces fungi which in the root tubers are able to bind the free nitrogen from the air. This means that the bush can survive in clean sand. The flowers in April are very insignificant, and the plant needs both male and female flowers in order to make fruit. In September the bush shows lots of orange fruits. It is a grand sight and the fruits are very healty. The berries have an extremely high content of C-vitamin, in average 400 mg pr. 100 g. Compared to this it is recommended that an adult daily takes 75 mg C-vitamin, but the berries also contains other vitamins, A-, B-, E-, and P-vitamins.  And also antioxidants, Omega 7 fatty acids and dietary fibers.

fieldfare

The sea buckthorn is easy to recognize among the other plants in the landscape with its narrow silver shining leaves. If it gets much light it will become a very broad, dense, thorny bush, since sea buckthorn forms root suckers. It can fill large areas with an inaccessible thicket - and this is a paradise for the birds. The fruits are an important winter food ressource for some birds, notably fieldfares, but also pheasants eat them. Leaves are eaten by the larvaes of lepidoptera-species. The bush is useful in shelterbelts, game depots or as a slope protection in loose and sandy soil. 


In Denmark scientists have began to do experiments with the buckthorn as a medicine which might have a beneficial effect on stomach ulcer.


Folk Medicine:

wikipedia.

Different parts of sea-buckthorn have been used as traditional therapies for diseases. As no applications discussed in this section have been verified by science and sufficient clinical trial evidence, such knowledge remains mostly unreferenced outside of Asia and is communicated mainly from person to person, therefore falling into the category of folk medicine. Grown widely throughout its native China and other mainland regions of Asia, sea-buckthorn is an herbal remedy reputedly used over centuries to relieve cough, aid digestion, invigorate blood circulation and alleviate pain. Bark and leaves may be used for treating diarrhea and dermatological disorders. Berry oil, taken either orally or applied topically, may be used as a skin softener. For its hemostatic and anti-inflammatory effects, berry fruits are added to medications for pulmonary, gastrointestinal, cardiac, blood and metabolic disorders in Indian, Chinese and Tibetan medicines. Sea-buckthorn berry components have potential activity against cancer.
 
Diverse:
 Sea-buckthorn is distributed free of charge to Canadian prairie farmers by PFRA to be used in shelterbelts.
When the berries are pressed, the resulting sea-buckthorn juice separates into three layers: on top is a thick, orange cream; in the middle, a layer containing sea-buckthorn's characteristic high content of saturated and polyunsaturated fats, and the bottom layer is sediment and juice.
Sea-buckthorn fruit can be used to makepies, jams, lotions and liquors. The juice or pulp has other potential applications in foods or beverages In Mongolia, it is made into juice, with concentrates also available. In Finland, it is used as a nutritional ingredient in baby food.
To overcome high acidity, juice made by adding five-parts water to one-part sea-buckthorn and sweetened to taste, put through a blender and strained, is said to taste like orange or peach juice. 
Sea-buckthorn leaves, dried and shredded, can be made into teas.


Kilde: Louise Lundgren Berg, Professionshøjskolen Metropol ; Jens Thejsen,Jordbrugets uddannelsescenter; Wikipedia.

photo Glatved strand, Djursland September 2012/ fieldfare Horsens Nørrestrand January 2010 : grethe bachmann